Let’s Talk: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Welcome to this week’s edition of Let’s Talk, where we will be discussing the new movie Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2. The follow up to the hugely successful Guardians of the Galaxy released over the weekend and, presumably, you have a nerd or two in your life who went to see it. Here are some of the highlights, Easter eggs, and other things about the movie that you can discuss with them.

Baby Groot

First off, this movie is hilarious. I personally found it to be much funnier than the original. But the biggest highlight of the movie for me was definitely Baby Groot. Baby Groot was funny and adorable and stole every scene he appeared in. And in one of the five post credit scenes, Baby Groot had grown into Teenage Groot, and still was hilarious. Do yourself a favor though and watch some YouTube clips

Tie ins, Cameos, and Easter Eggs

The movie had several cameos, including cameos David Hasselhoff as a manifestation of Peter Quill’s dream father figure, Sylvester Stallone as Starhawk, Ving Rhames as Charlie-27, Michelle Yeoh as Aleta Ogord, Michael Rosenbaum as Martinex T’Naga, and Miley Cyrus as the voice of Mainframe, who were all characters in the original comic book run of Guardians of the Galaxy. Other notable cameos include Howard the Duck, who was originally glimpsed in the first film as part of the Collector’s collection and Krugarr, who appeared briefly in one of the post credit scenes. Krugarr, is a character who has ties with Doctor Strange, so it’ll be interesting to see if he makes his way over to the movie.

In addition to the cameos, a couple of quick Easter eggs tie seemed to tie into the upcoming Thor: Ragnarok movie. In one scene, as Rocket Racoon travels throughout the universe, there is a quick shot of two gladiators, a nod to the scene in the upcoming movie where Thor and Hulk face off, which can be seen in the trailer.

Also, in the credits, Jeff Goldblum’s upcoming character The Grandmaster is seen dancing, another nod to the upcoming Thor film. And lastly, in the post credit scenes, we are teased with the creation of character Adam Warlock, a superhero who in the comics is powered by one of the Infinity Stones, the Soul Gem. (For our explanation of the significance of the Infinity Stones, see our Dr. Strange article). Since we are moving towards the Avengers: Infinity War movie, where Thanos will presumably get ahold of the six stones, it’ll be interesting to see if Adam Warlock plays a role in taking him down. If not, he’ll probably show up in the next Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

Stan Lee

As with all the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movies, Stan Lee has a cameo. Stan Lee, for those of you who don’t know, is a legendary comic book writer who created or co-created so, so many of Marvel’s most popular characters including Iron Man, Spider Man, Thor, Hulk, Doctor Strange… Honestly, It’s a lot. If you’ve heard of them, Stan Lee probably had a hand in the character’s creation. Here’s a link to a list.

But there are a couple interesting things about this cameo worth mentioning. First, in the cameo, he is sitting around talking to a bunch of Watchers. The Watchers are a race of highly advanced extra-terrestrials who, um, watch the universe. Seriously, they show up at random times throughout the comic book universe to observe particularly important or momentous moments and that’s pretty much all. They have a pretty strict policy of non-interference after they gave a race called the Prosilicans nuclear technology and that race promptly made weapons and destroyed themselves with it.

But anyways, the second, more interesting thing (for nerds) in the scene, is that in the scene Stan Lee is telling stories of his experiences to the Watchers and references his time as a FedEx driver, one of his previous cameos (from Captain America: Civil War). This seemingly confirms a theory that has been floated on the internets for years that Stan Lee is playing the same character in all of his cameos throughout the MCU. The fact that he is telling all of this to the Watchers lends credence to an extension of this theory that Stan Lee’s character is actually a Watcher, although he could just be an informant for them. Either way, it’s a bit of nerd trivia that your nerd may or may not have picked up on.

Anyways, hope this gets you caught up on some of the nerdy stuff from the movie. If you get a chance though, you should check it out. It really is quite funny.

12 Responses

Marvel really knows how to make a super hero movie. They do it better than any of the other studios, and Guardians Vol 2 is the perfect example of that. They pay such close attention to detail and how all the movies connect to one another.

I can’t wait to watch GOTG Vol. 2! My sister saw it opening weekend and thought it was better than the Vol. 1. I agree with the Stan Lee theory. I love when his cameo pops up during an MCU movie. The are always funny.